outs and ups and downs, and be always putting him before myself
in everything, as you do? No, I couldn't; I haven't it in me; but you
have. He's a sinner, too, and deserves to get me for a wife. But, Mara,
I have tormented him well--there's some comfort in that."

"It's no comfort to me," said Mara. "I see his heart is set on you--the
happiness of his life depends on you--and that he is pained and hurt
when you give him only cold, trifling words when he needs real true
love. It is a serious thing, dear, to have a strong man set his whole
heart on you. It will do him a great good or a great evil, and you ought
not to make light of it."

"Oh, pshaw, Mara, you don't know these fellows; they are only playing
games with us. If they once catch us, they have no mercy; and for one
here's a child that isn't going to be caught. I can see plain enough
that Moses Pennel has been trying to get me in love with him, but he
doesn't love me. No, he doesn't," said Sally, reflectively. "He only
wants to make a conquest of me, and I'm just the same. I want to make a
conquest of him,--at least I have been wanting to,--but now I see it's a
false, wicked kind of way to do as we've been doing."

"And is it really possible, Sally, that you don't love him?" said Mara,
her large, serious eyes looking into Sally's. "What! be with him so
much,--seem to like him so much,--look at him as I have seen you
do,--and not love him!"

"I can't help my eyes; they will look so," said Sally, hiding her face
in Mara's lap with a sort of coquettish consciousness. "I tell you I've
been silly and wicked; but he's just the same exactly."

"And you have worn his ring all summer?"

"Yes, and he has worn mine; and I have a lock of his hair, and he has a
lock of mine; yet I don't believe he cares for them a bit. Oh, his heart
is safe enough. If he has any, it isn't with me: that I know."

"But if you found it were, Sally? Suppose you found that, after all, you
were the one love and hope of his life; that all he was doing and
thinking was for you; that he was laboring, and toiling, and leaving
home, so that he might some day offer you a heart and home, and be your
best friend for life? Perhaps he dares not tell you how he really does
feel."

"It's no such thing! it's no such thing!" said Sally, lifting up her
head, with her eyes full of tears, which she dashed angrily away. "What
am I crying for? I hate him. I'm glad he's going away. Lately it has
been such a